December 04, 2013

1. My middle name is rose
2. I'm scared of heights, feris wheel scares me.
3. I have 12 piercings
4 . Before my pregancy I use to be lactose intolerant
5. I'm awkward
6. I'm a very paranoid person
7. I color my own hair
8. I have a younger brother named kyle
9. I hate wearing socks
10. Before Hannah's sickness I was not a home body! Couldn't pay me enough to stay home.
11. I'm aaddicted to pepsi max
12. Besides pepsi max I hate carbonated beverage, despise sparking anything.
13. I use to eat cake pretty much every day hannah was in the hospital
14. I use to have my monroe peirced on the other side then I do now
15. I am not a morning person
16. I hate being touched when I'm driving
17. I started telling our journey through a blog, then I got facebook and now I'm telling it through video!
18. I'm not a hugger
19. I hate eye, thinking about things going in them
20. I hate my knee caps being touched
21. Iv slept with ear plugs since high school
22. I hate asking for help
23. I have never been a smoker
24. I pretty much only cry when I'm stressed out
25. I like to think I'm some what artsy
26 . I want to have a baby boy, once hannahs all healthy
27. I have a hard time falling asleeo at night
28. I dropped put of school for 6 months in grade 11 and worked at mcdonalds.
29. I have a swetting problem
30. I don't have any tattos
31. I had a golf ball sized cyst removed off my ovarie
32. I drive a standard
33. I'm more awkward when I'm not weating make up
34. I feel like I need to wash my hair every day or it feels disgusting to me.
35. I never wanted to be a full time stay at home mother/house wife.
36. I hate people that want others to feel sorry for them!
37. I taught my self how to drive standard
38. I use to work at the bank
39. I don't like mushrooms or raw spinach
40. I have I swear 30 plantars warts from the first hotel we stay at in vancouver when I was pregnant that I have been getting treated for over a year, that jisy won't go away!
41. Easter is my favourite holiday
42. My favourite color to wear is black
43. If you could tell my friends 4 years ago, I would be the mom I am today they would have never belived you.
44. I shampoo my hair twice every time I was it
45. I'm a hairdresser
46. I cracked my thumb nail on a lawn chair when I was three and I still have a crack in my nail
47. I'm illergic to codine (which is in t3's)
48. I'm perfectly content being a single parent
49. This is the first place iv lived in by my self ( with out roomates)
50. The girls 6th birthday will be on easter sunday

It's Thanks giving!!! I am thank full for many things like, Hannah's health how she's slowly improving, I am thankful that Hailey hasn't had another seizure and doesn't has cerebral palsy. Im thankful for my best friends ashly and steph who still text me every day even though I just talk about sick babies, but I'm sad that we are to far apart to be spending another thanks giving dinner at stephs.

I'm thankful for my mom and all the support she gives us.. weather it be taking Hailey for the night, helping when were in the hospital or being my second person to bring the girls out to do stuff.

What I am most thankful for is that I have leah. She is the most selfless, caring amazing women I have ever met. I met her two Augusts ago now, right before Hannah come home.. I posted on a mom shop and swap site asking for a cheap change table, responded that she had a free one and my mom went to pick it up(or she dropped it off I can't remember). Then we got to talking and she asked me what I needed and helped as much as she could.. she even came over right before Hannah came home to clean and put stuff away. because we had never lived in our place before it was a little bit of a disaster. Soon after that I posted on another facebook site that I was looking for a daycare and she offered to do it.. She became my daycare respite person . When Hannah goes to the hospital there has to be someone to watch Hailey and my mom can not do it all the time. Leah is so amazing, it doesn't matter what day it is, what time it is shes always available!

She has 5 kids of her own; 1 she adopted when she was 19(pretty sure), she adopted a boy and a girl with FAS, she has her first born son who is now 3 and she just had her first born girl who is 3 months WHILE having 2 young kids in foster care and still helping me with Hailey. She deserves a freaking metal! I probably secretly drive her insane, but I am so greatful for everything she does.

I don't say it enough but thank you leah and bruce, I don't know if I could do it with out you.

October 07, 2013

Car Shopping! Trying to find a car that makes me feel young while being able to fit; two car seats and an adult in the back seat, and a bob stroller in the trunk. Tested out Honda Accord, Jetta, honda civic and a mazda 3

October 05, 2013

My Name is Bonnie, I was born in thunder bay ontario nov 12, two years later my little brother was born. life was simple back then

When I was 4 my mom left our dad and moved us all the way from ontraio to beautiful British columbia and my dad followed a year or so later

When I was 5 my mom met our step dad who I will call A. He was apart of our lives for 8-9 years untill, one day in grade 9 I came home early from a volley ball practice to find the house being searched for hiden video camreas. He had placed camreas in the bathroom to video tape me. I had to go to counseling for a few year to deal with what had happen to me. He was charged.. but he got 6 months house arrest and was still allowed to go to work

The next few years where really hard on me but in grade 10 I met my best friend steph and things got a little better. I wasn't really into school and was more of a bad influence so her dad didn't like us to hang out

In grade 11 I got a job at wendys , where I met my other best friend ashly who was a few years older... so she could buy us beer;) as the years went on me and ashly became closer and closer (inseparable almost)

In Grade 12 steph moved up north to be with her boyfriend, 16hours away which made me really sad but I hoped that she would come back

After I graduated high school I felt really lost. So when steph and her boyfriend were buying a house an invited me to come up there and rent a room from them I took them up on their offer.

A few months later I convinced ashly that she should move up there.. and we got an apartment together.

After working a few different jobs I decided that I wanted to move back home and go to hair dressing school.

while I was in school getting really bad ovarian pains and the doctor said I would have to have surgery to remove a felopean tube at august.. it made me a little sad that with out a fallopian tube. I probably couldn't have babies and that made me really sad.

My dad got into a bad car accident while I was in school... he didnt make it, I was devestarted

I moved back up north the day after I finished hairdressing school because I needed to be closer to my besties

I got a job at a salon and life was good

On my dads birthday I went out with some friends to the bar and I got way to drunk. Thats where I met DB. We ended up going home together that night... the next morning I Didnt give him my number was really embarrased of how drunk I was

I went in for surgery and they discovered my tube wasn't damage! I had a golf ball size cyst on my ovary that twisted my tubes around. They removed the cyst and I was relived to hear I could have babies.

DB called my work looking for me three week after we met. We started dating and everything was great he was the sweetest guy ever and I fell completely in love him and his kids. Every thing was good until I got pregnant.. then he started to he controlling and abusive.. I needed help to get out of the relationship.

We found out we were having twins and one was smaller so I had to go to Vancouver for the hospital and he stays up north, which gave me an out in our relationship. My blessing in disguise

I was in vancouver two and a half months waiting for the girls to be born thankfully, I had my besties to talk to on the phone and My mom came to visit

When they were born Hannah weighed 1 lbs 7 oz and Hailey weighed 2lbs 14 oz.

Hailey was in the NICU for 93 days before she came , Hannah stayed in the hospital for 507day(1 and a half years) and came home with a trach. We moved back to my home town to be close to the hospital and to my mom and this is where were at now. :)

You can't always choose what happens in your life but you can choose how you deal with it.

October 03, 2013

Court is done and finished... for now. I am still in shock of how stressful it was, and we never even made it into a court room.
Court was suppose to be on Tuesday October 1st but on the Thursday before my legal aid lawyer called me to inform me that they wanted to make a deal. The deal was based on his claimed income amount(which is lower then he makes because he has a business and doesn't pay him self the full amount) and what he wanted to pay for back pay(which was not even close to what I was expecting). My lawyer really wanted to take the deal and I felt pressured into taking the deal because of it.
Originally I was told that I would get back pay from the day DB was serves papers back in November 2011, not knowing he had already filed in court. meaning I should have been getting back pay from November 2011- October 2013. My current lawyer informed me on this Thursday that my first lawyer had not put in an application for support and she had done so in July 2012, so she told me I would only qualify for back pay from July 2012 forward. She also said that since I started income assistance September 2012 all the back pay I would get from September 2012 forward would go to the tax payers(which she didn't want to fight for). So since she had already told me untrue information about income assistance in the past( Click here to read the false information) I couldn't trust her this time. I also wasn't convinced I would get any support from Nov 2011-June 2012 because im my affidavit in Dec 2011 it was stated that we were applying for child support and custody.. but i'm not a lawyer so I don't know what that means.
My lawyer wanted to make it so that I got all the back pay and that it didn't go to income assistance so she wanted to word the order so that it was just for the year I wasn't on income assistance. In an ideal world that would be awesome, but would income assistance see through the plan and have a problem with this... would they want to cut me off forever because "I was" intentionally screwing them out of money that they were owed. So stressful and at this point im really starting to feel alone.. no one I know has gone through anything like this and I don't have a partner to tell me how they feel and it was scary.
I don't feel like sharing why I settled but I settled and for a lot less back pay then I wanted to. I got the lawyers to give a little bit of back pay for both years so that if income assistance wants me to give them money I will(and I'll keep you posted how that goes). The amount I settled for is less then a years worth of child support and NONE of my receipts from the extraordinary expenses were even considered in the amount. But hopefully if DB is happy then I wont have to see a court room.
I got them to update the custody/guardianship on the new order but it was like pulling teeth. My lawyer didn't even want to bring up asking for guardianship because she "didn't want to open the can of worms" and put it out there and end up getting less then I already have. But given our story HOW ON EARTH would I not leave with sole guardianship? The only reason I ended up getting sole guardianship is because DB emailed me asking if I accepted his offer so I asked about guardianship and he agreed. But it still wasn't as easy as that. I asked my lawyer to put it on the order and she said since I had sole custody I had sole guardianship.
On our old order where it says I have sole custody right under it, it says guardianship will be decided on another date.. Reading that whos going to give me a passport for them with out DB's signature? The reason she finally listened to me and put it on the order is because I said how I changed their last names so to everyone who sees the old order Im going to have to connect the dots how there last names use to be _____ and now are Harris.
Very stressful time, didn't feel supported or knowledgeable.

September 30, 2013

Its allot harder then it looks to sit in front of a camera and talk! Its hard not to say um when your trying to remember what happened and I found if I wrote notes to remind my self of what to say "um" would come out even more!! But I did it, i'm proud of my self and will work on controlling my ummmmmms.

September 15, 2013

Found a computer in the hospital so I'm going to write a longer post of whats going on.

Lately(before admission) I've been getting really frustrated with this hospital. I feel like i'm never heard, there isn't a plan for Hannah's health and they aren't pushing to get ride of things. It was to the point where I was strongly considering switching hospitals because not only did I feel that I wasn't heard and she wasn't being pushed to get better I also didn't feel like the way they were going about things was right. Like doctors not talking to specialist, tests being run to make sure the changes weren't hurting her.

Two or three times ago that the Jtube fell out I asked the doctors and nuteritonest about testing a Gtube and got shot down. One person even fought with me when I told them that Hannah had a gtube for the first year of her life. Since Hannah wasn't in this hospital when she had a gtube, they didn't see it and wouldn't believe me. The idea was shut down instantly.
When Hannah got her granuloma removed I asked the ENT to please while he was doing the bronchoscopy to please check her vocal cord functions and take a look at her lungs. Since he was going in already it would be nice to know how shes doing and not have to set up another appointment. Didn't check any thing.
End of july I contacted her doctor about setting up a sleep study to test Hannah off the ventilator, they said they would get back to me in a few days. In that few days she started having ventilator troubles because there was a large leak from her trach. 2-3 weeks later I still hadn't heard from them so I had a nurse email the doctor with all of our concerns. Nothing was dealt with in that email, no date set up. Felt like the didn't care. They told us the PICU was full and to contact the ventilator company because they thought it was the ventilator, even though they hadn't seen Hannah or the ventilator. Two weeks after that when finally I demanded I be given at least 3 weeks notice to when we were coming not just be told the week of. We were told maybe come on the 22nd but not to book off the nurses because the date might get pushed back.
I know a sleep study isn't life threatening and it is a small PICU, but we still deserve to have the medical attention we need to live a healthy life. Sooner rather then later.

So the point of that story is I was coming to the hospital expecting the worst prepared to have the doctor once again blame the Jtube falling out on me and my nurses, to not be listened to and feel like we got the bare minimum care. But that wasn't the case this time! We got to trial a Gtube WITH OUT ME SUGGESTING IT! I think that's almost the best part.. (almost ;) the gtubes still the best part). We did the sleep study and it went great. WE TALKED ABOUT A PLAN TO DECANNULATE! Quickly, but I heard it and now know and estimated amount of time as long as everything goes smoothly.

Hannah naps with out the vent for 6 months

Comes back for a night time sleep study

Few months after that we start working on decannulating ( smaller trach, ect)

So excited about that! Id estimate that at a year and a half.. Then she could stay with anyone, go out of the house with no equipment, catch less colds, no home nursing, BE A NORMAL KID!!!!!

The G tube feeds have been going fantastic. Shes on normal strength formula at a rate of 50ml running 24 hours a day(right now) and not puking, amazing. The night nurse started a few hours ago and told me that last night in the middle of the night the GI surgeon(who I swear just hates us) and was pretty peeved that she was getting feed via gtube. She made them run half pedilate half formula for longer then the original plan was. Since Hannah was doing so good she had no right to say stop the feeds untill she could have the jtube put back in. So I will be FOREVER great full that we came in late Friday night and there was only one doctor working to make all the calls or nothing would have ever changed. My home nurse said earlier on Friday that everything happens for a reason and I'm defiantly feeling that right now.

The other day I was thinking about how it doesn't make sense that Hannah needs her vocal cords to breath. I know its a proven fact you need them to breath. If her vocal cord is stuck open, how is she loosing air with every breath but not with a trach? There isn't a valve in the trach that closes every time you inhale. So I asked the doctor on why you need your vocal cords to breath. She said its because usually there stuck shut and you have a hard time breathing in air around it! Which is not how I was told Hannahs vocal cords were so I asked her to check her old files. There isn't any in this hospital she'll have to get the information from children.... I hope i'm right and that what I was told(or think I was told) is true, ill have so much faith in Hannah's trach coming out.

I don't know how much longer we are going to be here for, probably fine out tomorrow. We need to get her pulmonary hypertension checked (its been a year :|), and I spoke to the doctor about getting the ENT to take a look at her air way and vocal cords. So either we will be here till thursday or we will come back around the 26th.

September 14, 2013

Originally our plan was to come to Victoria General Hospital on September 22nd to have Hannahs trach leak checked, have a sleep study done, check her pulmonary hypertension and meet with the cardiologist. We were going to take wheels for wellness for the first time to get here and were hopefully going to be here for about a week.
Yesterday (September 13th) Hannahs jtube fell out because the balloon in the tube was no longer holding water. EVERY time the jtube falls out it has to be put back in by a radiologist and has to be done at Victoria or children's hospital. Because Hannah needs to be sedated for the procedure she needs to be at a hospital that can take care of her airway. So we went to the local hospital who then sent us by ambulance to Victoria general.
We got here (Victoria general) at 9:30pm, the doctor didn't come in last night because Hannah looked good. The doctor instead of giving the nurses directions to so stat an IV to keep her hydrated until the jtube could be put back in, gave the nurses direction to start running pedialite through the foley catheter!!! It ran all night at 40mls an hour and never puked, so today its running at 50mls an hour. Next they are going to run half pedialite half formula at 50mls/hr, then all formula and then try to increase it from there.. sending us home with a gtube (if all goes good)! Very very exciting.
Today we also trialed Hannag off the ventilator while she napped! At first it wasn't looking good... We had her flat on her back with the trach cuff deflated and she was ringing off between 85-93. So we put her back on the vent, inflated the cuff and lifted the head of the bed. 20 minutes after we put her back on the vent we took it back off and she did amazing! Maybe she wasn't use to having a belly full of fluids and laying flat on her back or maybe she needed her cuff inflated, but fingers crossed she keeps doing good off the ventilator during naps.

September 12, 2013

Yeay for mommy time, today was the second class of the wilton basic cake decorating course. We had to bring to class a cake iced with filling in the middle and a few colors of medium thick frosting.

Before this cake I had never made a cake from scratch! Origonally I was going to make a really tall cake and baked two cakes to stack on each other.... but I discovered after making my first cake you really need to follow the directions of when you add things.. its not throwing everything into the bowl and mixing it hahah.

We used wax paper and pipping gel to transfer a cupcake picture onto the cake. I can already see me using this technique.. it would be so easy to transfer a picture of dora onto a cake.